Really? Please enlighten me as to when and where the federal or even any state government has attempted to run so roughshod over the freedom of contract (which IS in the constitution - if I do remember correctly.)

The other thing I don't like - REQUIRING people as an effective condition of citizenship to purchase health care from a private company. This is of course not mentioned or even contemplated per se in the constitution. But to anyone with any sense of historical perspective (i.e. understands who the three "Publius" authors were), it would appear as if that entire concept would have been completely abhorrent to the people who actually put the foundation of our country in place.

Sherrod Brown makes me sick. He is a phony and poseur and cynical charlatan of the worst sort. I have this vision of him in the makeup room prior to one of his nightly appearances on Rachel Maddow and the makeup artist is working on his hair. "No, no," says Sherrod, in that affected faux-gravelly voice he probably only uses in front of a camera - "I need to look more DISHEVELED. Like the working stiff that I am!"

PLEASE, Ohio, please get rid of this idiot in 2012. Although if so the victory would be of the Pyrhhic sort, as it would no doubt remove Connie's "conflict of interest" and land her idiotic nonsense back in these pages. Analogizing the Triangle Shirtwaist 1911 deaths to the struggle of today's AFSCME types to be able to retire at 40 with multi-million dollar packages and the ability to come back to "work" a day later.

Oh, Sherrod. Once again, inspiring words from the Tribune of the Plebs (who from what I can tell probably never filled out a W-2 in his straight from law school to politics life.)

Let's see if you can follow this one - REQUIRE the banks to modify pre-existing contractual relationships (blatantly unconstitutional, but who is counting) and REQUIRE the banks to purchase the foreclosed homes (again blatantly unconstitutional, but so then is REQUIRING purchase of an insurance policy from a private company so maybe I'm losing my own argument here.)

But trifling matters of legality aside, where - other than in loony Sherrod/Connie world - do you think all these extra costs you are imposing on the banks end up going?

Well they don't come out of Jamie Dimon's $80 million yearly bonus. Rather, those costs will inevitably be passed on to the very Plebs the Tribune of which dear old Sherrod aspires to be.

Every time I get turned off and disgusted by the teabag Republicans I read something like this and realize why I could never vote for a Democrat.

Ah, Cleveland. With a lunatic nanny-state government like this, it might as well be San Francisco. Uh, except without the charm, tourist appeal, economic strength, cultural affinities, tax base, (lack of a) crime rate, or pretty much any other indicia of a quality of life anywhere above about the second or third percentile.

When you are an utter and total hellhole like Cleveland it might make more sense to try to aim for the other end of the spectrum on governance (i.e. at least here people leave me alone and don't tell me what I can or cannot eat.)

Even more than the worst franchise in Cleveland history, this Browns iteration is probably the worst franchise in all major professional sports.

Only the likes of the Pittsburgh Pirates and KC Royals might be able to argue that. The other two teams that immediately come to mind (Detroit Lions, LA CLippers) both have shown some serious signs of life lately.

By all accounts Colt McCoy is a very good guy. But he is a backup QB at best in the NFL and he (and daddy) probably need to reconcile themselves to that. And to the fact that Seneca Wallace is probably a better fit as backup QB in "Gale" Shurmur's weak-ass 5.9 yards/pass attempt excuse for an offensive system.

As I have said before, why would ANYONE want to transact ANY business of ANY sort in Cleveland or Cuyahoga County.

Not to defend this sleazeball. But he stands as an example of the simple principle that to do business in the Cleveland area is to subject oneself to the jurisdiction of the lunatic courts and city departments.

Lots of other places in the US to make money. Which the, uh, Census figures would seem to bear out.

Oh lovely, on one hand a perennial vanity presidential candidate who is a complete and utter joke amongst his colleagues and who cannot deliver anything whatsoever to the constituents. And on the other, someone who stands for the proposition that we can just magic ourselves into the circa-1955 Big Union Rust Belt economy.

The winner likely to run (and pull 80% of the vote) against someone who believes the world is flat and a couple of thousand years old, and that we can just magic ourselves back to Leave it to Beaver-land on cultural issues. Oh, and who probably also wants to invade and occupy the 5% of the world we currently are not occupying in one form or another.

Lovely "choice" there. Where do people like me have to go? I don't think I'm alone in saying that I just want to live a happy and prosperous life and not bother anyone else or tell them how to live theirs. We need a REAL third party in this country. And not a kooky one. Just one that stands for about the 80% of Americans not lined up on the ideological specturm with Dennis/Marcy or their eventual doomed teabagger opponent.

You can't just wish your way into a world that no longer exists. With globalization and the "service economy" there just is no heavy manufacturing sector that will support the sort of middle-class existence that a lot of people seem to believe is their entitlement.

What is the answer to the dilemma? I honestly don't know. The whole Sherrod Brown/Marcy Kaptur vision of somehow magically transporting us back to 1955 just cannot happen. To even pretend to espouse what these nimrods claim to stand for is just foolishness. It is like wishing for fairy dust to rain from the heavens and allow all their RELATIVELY uneducated constituents to have a Suburban in every driveway.

We can't wall ourselves off from the rest of the world. No one else is doing it. Look at Franquist Spain, contemporary North Korea, and everywhere else that tried the path of "autarky." Does not work.

At the same time our current Wal-mart economy where everyone makes slightly above minimum wage isn't much of a deal either. At the same time wages and living standards go down, the social safety net becomes economically unsustainable. Vicious cycle. Would hate to be a young person coming out into this world.

As a nation we need to figure out what we can do that provides value and which cannot easily be replicated in Bangalore or Xianjian. Easier said than done but that is pretty much what needs to be done.

Germany would seem to be a nice example. High education, high skill, export-driven economy. And, yes, manufacturer. With a way better social safety net and an objectively higher quality of life for the average person. But ooooh, ooooh, no, that's a EUROPEAN country. BAD! BAD BAD BAD!!!!!! Can't take any lessons from them. Right, teabaggers? I mean, other than the lessons that most of the teabag probably would like to take from circa-1933-1945 Germany.

And that's not just one of my usual cheap shots - RICH IOTT, ANYONE!?!?!?!

How do you fall for the "draw the other team offsides on 4th and less than 5" trick!?!?!?!

I have been watching football since the freaking 1970's and have NEVER seen that work. NEVER!!!!!! Like 100% of the people in the stadium know that it is a trick and that the offense will either call TO at 1 second or take the penalty and punt.

Coaching matters. We've seen similar and completely unacceptable lapses in coaching, organization, and discipline all the way back to game one when the Bengals were lining up to snap the ball and our guys were milling about in befuddlement and no one was calling a TO.

Try again, Fat-ass Holmgren. Gale Boetticher - er, Pat Shurmur is just not ready for prime time. Or even 1PM eastern, which is when 16 of our games will be starting next season.

It would be nice if all the 2010-elected teabaggers ACTUALLY stood for things like this (keeping government nannies out of peoples' lives.)

Rather than what they apparently DO stand for (passing ludicrous abortion restrictions that would even get struck down by Antonin Scalia, imposition of some Southern Baptist version of Sharia law, fighting the non-existent threat of ACTUAL Sharia law, and neo-Confederate 10th Amendment/nullification silliness.)

Memo to teabaggers: MOST people don't like silly government bureaucrats telling them what to do. But when you yourselves become the silly government bureaucrats you need to keep that in mind.

I always thought that if you were a man and were pro-choice, reason #1 probably is that you didn't want to be someday under the guns of the child-support Nazis and facing incarceration because you were not earning what a domestic relations magistrate thought you SHOULD be making in order to "support" your child.

At least for me this has always been the case.

So an epiphany, then, as I read on wonkette or some such place about the weekly revelation that some pro-family Republican lawmaker somewhere is paying male prostitutes for sex. Or trolling airport bathrooms or whatever. SO many "Republican is secretly gay" scandals that they all tend to run together anymore.

Anyway, it suddenly all makes sense! Yeah, they can pander all they want to their American Taliban, flat-earth, intelligent-designing constituents on this issue! What do THEY have to worry about? Because this will never be seen in the headlines: "GOP legislator's rent boy files paternity suit."

Hamilton is kind of a shill for the corporate propaganda line at any given moment. However, that is pretty much par for the course anymore. Gone are the days of the outsized and untouchable broadcast personality when you could hear Marty Brenneman rip the Marge Schott-era Reds on the air. Used to love that when I lived in central Ohio. Marty blasting the front office or players on the field or whatnot with Nuxhall in his alcoholic dementia offering some sort of incoherent point in support.

Rosenhaus has a terrible voice for this but I actually grew to appreciate the fact that he extremely proficient on a technical basis.

Hey, for once I will give Kevin O'Brien some credit for being right about something. Even more so for approvingly citing Laurence Tribe - well known in the legal community as a bastion of generally liberal jurisprudence.

Our biggest problem is not this largely chimerical distinction between the "red" and "blue" teams. No, it is the threat all of us face from immensely powerful lobbying interests (such as the reprehensible MPAA in this case) that have co-opted both "sides" and which regularly trample the rights of an increasingly powerless electorate.

Because nothing says "middle class" like being able to "work" an hour or two on the public dime then go home "sick" (most likely to make plans for your "retirement" at age 40 followed immediately by your return to work at full salary plus a pension.)

As much as I hate the ignorant, theocratic, neo-Confederate political party that the Republicans have become, crap like this CFD story makes it almost impossible for me to ever support the Democrats so long as these "middle class" public employee unions basically run the show.

Oh yeah, the traffic law he was breaking was that unofficial one about being black or hispanic in a car with out-of-state plates.

Five will get you ten that Mr. Courier was doing NOTHING wrong and this "following too closely" was some par for the course lying by the OHP.

I'm a former criminal defense attorney. I'll tell you right now that these drug guys DO take care to follow the traffic laws that are actually on the books. That is why so many are stopped for "following too closely" or the perennial favorites "improper lane change" and "weaving within the lane."

Police should be required to actually show EVIDENCE (beyond their usual perjured testimony) that these pretextual "offenses" actually took place. Is there dashboard cam footage of this "following?" Bet you anything that for some inexplicable reason there is not.

1) I usually hate Alec Baldwin for the muddle-headed Hollywood dilettante that he is.

However,
2) comment about AA stewardesses - GENIUS!!!! He only fell short in failing to add "overweight" to "former catholic school teachers from the 1950s."
3) this whole electronic device on planes thing is so utterly retarded as to defy belief. Last flight I was on they yelled at some guy for having a little CAMERA. I mean, come on AA, if a freaking CAMERA is going to crash your plane then you've got some serious problems.

Agreed completely on all counts Sam. I've been hoping they would remove the death sentence from this cop-killing piece of crap SOLELY for the reason that it MIGHT shut up SOME of these Occupy Wall Street-type loons.

But it won't because, uh, now the "injustice" will merely be that this idiot has to spend life in prison.

I don't even think there was the usual "new evidence" here that you usually hear about for every death row creep (i.e. perjured alibi testimony from friends and neighbors of the accused.) I just think these Mumia worshippers think that killing a cop is okay if you're, uh.... downtrodden.

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